The Russian Meat Grinder

‘Meat-grinder’ Recruitment RUSSIA The Russian army is recruiting female convicts to ship to the frontlines in Ukraine. In exchange for enlisting to serve as medics, radio operators and snipers, the former prisoners receive a $2,000-a-month salary, reported the New York Times. The newspaper estimated that around 40 of 400 inmates in a Saint Petersburg prison for women recently accepted the offer. They are just the latest example of the Russian military’s desperation to find more bodies to throw into the “meat grinder” of war that has developed in the two years since Russia invaded Ukraine. Tens of thousands of male convicts have also joined the Russian effort, including murderers and rapists. President Vladimir Putin claims that NATO provoked the invasion and has prolonged the war due to Western military aid to Ukraine. But he has also rejected the idea of Ukraine as a sovereign state outside Mother Russia. To realize his policy goals, more than 150,000 Russian soldiers have perished in fighting citizens of a country that the president claims doesn’t exist, according to Agence France-Presse. To make up for such epic losses, Russia has welcomed recruits from Cuba, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, India, Zambia, Somalia, and elsewhere, wrote the Kyiv Independent, an English-language Ukrainian new site. He’s offering citizenship, high salaries and jobs in Moscow to those foreigners who help Russia fight Ukraine. Even so, many of the thousands of Nepalis in the Russian army want to quit. Now, Nepal has even stopped issuing foreign work permits for citizens who would seek employment in Russia to prevent more from entering the war. Nepalese leaders have been in talks with Russian leaders to repatriate the remains of fallen Nepali soldiers amid other issues, added Al Jazeera. Around 2,000 Sri Lankans have also been fighting on Russia’s side. They claim they were duped into coming to Russia, where they believed they would find a civilian job but instead found themselves pressed into the country’s military. The salary of $2,000 a month has lured Cubans who generally receive less than $25 a month, noted the BBC. An offer of Russian citizenship also entices African mercenaries who might find more opportunities in a Eurasian power than in their struggling, developing countries. These efforts have helped Russian officials make the claim that 100,000 people have joined up since the beginning of the year, reported Reuters. But some have been tricked into coming, according to Babel, a site funded by supporters of Ukraine. Recruiters promise jobs – and then tell the applicants they must first pay off their recruitment expenses by serving in the army. Or they respond to fake ads for jobs or to study in Russian universities, as did Siddhartha Dhakal, 22, from Mandandeupur in Nepal. Dhakal, a student, had paid to go to Russia to study medicine, but found on his arrival that he had been tricked and that his only option was to join the military. He was sent to the front and captured by Ukrainian forces in November. “He is our only one son, our only hope,” his father, Biru Dhakal, told the Guardian, sobbing. “Please bring him home.”